Two distinct styles join at Outer Space exhibition
In mid-July, a small second-floor gallery in Concord opened a show called “Montages,” with two artists, Peter Cordova and Kyoko Idetsu, showing their work. It’s billed as an artistic conversation, and that’s the idea that led Roger Buttles to open Outer Space Arts in a well-lit space across the hall from his own studio in the former residence of a Civil War colonel.
Pairing artists has been a constant at Outer Space since it opened in 2023. Sometimes Buttles looks for resemblances in genre or style. Occasionally he’ll mix media, bringing together a two-dimensional painter or drawer with a sculptor or ceramicist. “I’m not repeating myself over and over, because that becomes stagnant to me,” he said by phone recently.
For Buttles, the connection between Cordova, an illustrator who also works in ceramic sculpture, and Idetsu, a Japanese painter, was that both disorient the picture plane in their work.
“That’s why I titled the show ‘Montages,’” he said. “There are multiple perspectives — not in a cubist sense, but a distorted perspective coming together into one unified image.”
Cordova’s ceramic works aren’t included in the exhibition. “There were a few I could have chosen, but logistically it made more sense to keep this show all two-dimensional,” Buttles said. “His works are all colored pencil on cardboard. Kyoko’s side has both paintings and works on paper — pen and ink.”
The inspiration for Outer Space, and the reason Buttles pairs artists rather than mounting solo shows, traces back to his time studying under Michelle Grabner at the Art Institute of Chicago. Grabner, an artist and curator, ran an exhibition space called The Suburban out of her garage and tool shed outside of the city.
Buttles, whose primary job is advising collectors in New York, Miami, San Francisco and other big cities, never planned to open a gallery. That changed when his wife, a radiologist, took a job in Manchester. The couple and their family, two twin daughters and a son, relocated from NYC.
Upon arrival he found a studio on Pleasant Street in Concord with enough space for small exhibitions.
“It’s affordable,” he said. “I don’t have the pressure or expectations of running a commercial gallery in an expensive city. That gives me a lot of creative freedom in what I show, because I’m not going to go bankrupt doing this.”
In other words, he’s not trying to build an empire.
“I’m basically breaking even … it’s not a money-making venture,” he said. Outer Space is closer to a calling, and a way of staying connected to the artist he still primarily believes himself to be. “I consider myself an artist first, who happens to run this artist-run exhibition space.”
Buttles grew up on Long Island with little exposure to art. His creative outlet was sports, and he played lacrosse through college. Photography found him almost by accident, sparked at 14 by an offhand comment from his older brother’s college friend about earning credit for a photo class.
That seed grew into a career in black-and-white photography. Finding William Eggleston’s color work at 22 was a key jolt of discovery. During his twenties, Buttles apprenticed in San Francisco galleries and frame shops, mounting Diane Arbus and Robert Frank photos one day, and Mission School painters the next.
His entrée into collecting came when he discovered Creativity Explored, a nonprofit studio in San Francisco, began buying their 20- and 30-dollar pieces and embraced the idea of affordable art. Coincidentally, Cordova worked there. He immigrated to San Francisco from the Philippines at 19 and joined the studio in 1996, having never made art before.
Buttles has already featured Creativity Explored artists in two prior Outer Space shows but held Cordova back, sensing he deserved one of his own. That show found its second half in Idetsu, an artist Buttles connected with separately. Her work centers on domesticity and child-rearing filtered through a Tokyo perspective.
Buttles insists that the upcoming show should feel unintimidating. He compares the experience with listening to classical music without needing expertise in music theory. “I don’t know anything about it technically, but I really enjoy it; I feel like that’s how art should be too,” he said. “There shouldn’t have to be a prerequisite of knowledge.”
“Montages”: Peter Cordova & Kyoko Idetsu
When: Saturdays, through Sept. 19, noon-3 p.m. (or call for appointment)
Where: Outer Space Gallery, 35 Pleasant St., 2nd floor, Concord
More: outerspacearts.xyz
A reception with both artists happens Wednesday, July 29, at 5 p.m.
Featured photo: “Two Indian Head Tail” by Peter Cordova. From outerspacearts.xyz.
